


Imperfect(a)

by BrooklynBugleBoy



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Band, Brittle Bone Disease, Broken Bones, Chronic Illness, Cute, Declarations Of Love, Disabilities, Drums, Falling In Love, Modern AU, Multi, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Polyamory, mention of abortion, perfectly imperfect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 21:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16920972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy
Summary: Roger Taylor was six years old, groggy from both the anesthesia and the eight-hour long surgery to put telescoping rods in both of his child-chubby legs, when he first realized the truth of the world.That he wasn’t like other children and that his life would be unbelievably difficult.(For all the anons on tumblr who asked for Roger with a chronic illness/disability).





	Imperfect(a)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! If you're interested in more information about Osteogenesis Imperfecta, here are some links!
> 
> http://www.oif.org/site/PageServer?pagename=fastfacts
> 
> https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/osteogenesis-imperfecta/
> 
> https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=osteogenesis-imperfecta-in-children-90-P02773
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAhs-piej1o&t=318s
> 
>  
> 
> The quotes that are unlabeled came from: https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases--conditions/osteogenesis-imperfecta

 

  
Roger Taylor was six years old, groggy from both the anesthesia and the eight-hour long surgery to put telescoping rods in both of his child-chubby legs, when he first realized the truth of the world.

"Did I make the wrong choice?" 

His mother was sobbing, letting her own aging father rock her like she was still a small child. 

She had been seventeen years old when she got pregnant. By her eighteenth birthday she had a diploma, no boyfriend and a chronically ill child to raise on her own.

"He wanted to terminate, but I didn't _let_ … I didn’t _want_ … I needed to give him _a chance_ , Mum! I had too. _He's my baby!_ I love him so much, so so so so much... but look at him, look at _me!_ How could I have done this to him? He'll spend his whole life _in pain,_ and for what? Because his teenaged single mother was too _selfish_ to let him go. Should... Should I have let him _go?"_

He was six years old when he learned the way of the world. That he wasn’t like other children and that his life would be unbelievably difficult. But hey, that was just his life. 

Years later and Roger was trapped in The Royal London Hospital’s Osteogenesis Imperfecta clinic.

A pamidronate infusion site in his arm while he frantically tried to submit a paper for another shit class, using his barely charged laptop and the shitty hospital wifi. _Goddammit,_ it was due in less than an hour and it was likely to take twice as long for the fucking file to send. He would've yelled in frustration and chucked the blasted thing out the damn window, if there had been any chance of it actually helping his cause. As it stood, his MacBook was probably going to die within the next couple of seconds anyway. 

He was doubly screwed. 

A rational person would just ask for an extension on the project. 

But he was a stubborn bitch, so…? _Yeah._

Being a dentist for the rest of his life was just sounding worse and worse.

He'd already been MIA in that stupid class for the past three days due to his continuous infusion cycle. Something he really couldn't avoid. He physically _had_ to be admitted for it and that was just how long the process lasted. When he emailed his Professor, he had explained that it was an important personal matter and that it wouldn't happen again. _(No mention of OI or hospitals or infusion cycles.)_ But he could tell the arse was getting annoyed. 

Roger had already missed six other class days this semester. _(For most of his classes)._

Once was for an unexpectedly displaced broken arm that had to be reset in A&E in the wee hours of the morning, two were for bone scans that couldn't be rescheduled _(he'd tried)_ , another was for a couple of broken ribs after he'd fallen in the shower _(none of his four other flatmates/bandmates were home thank God)_ paramedics had to be called and everything, the fifth was also for the ribs as he'd been admitted to check for flail chest, the sixth was only a week before when he'd banged his left foot against a door jam and broken three bones in it.

He'd needed to be fitted with a soft cast and walking boot at the OI clinic during the weekday. 

When Freddie freaked out over the sight later, Roger just laughed it off. Said he could still tear drum-skins apart with his other foot or the casted one, no problem.

…He knew he _had_ to tell them at some point.

He forever had something casted, for some bone or another that he’d fucked up, or went missing for days on end for appointments and brief hospital stays.

It was a wonder that they hadn’t already asked. _(Or filed a Missing Persons report)._ Did he really seem that accident prone? That flighty?

It had been what, _a year_ with John? Even more so with Freddie and Brian in particular.

And he’d had at least fourteen different breaks since that first day, when he stumbled into that drumming audition with a yellow cast on one wrist and an enormous grin on his face.

_“Wouldn’t say I’m as good as Ginger Baker, but I’m willing to give it a shot if you lot are?”_

"So I hear my star patient is trying to skip out on me?" 

Dr. Billie Taylor was barely five years Roger's senior _(Doogie Howser and all),_ and she relished in the fact that their last names matched now, never forgoing an opportunity to remind him of it. 

"And that he forgot one of these." She tossed him a small white box and he caught it with practiced ease. A converter for his archaic laptop charger. 

"I love you, Billie. Marry me?" 

"Sorry sweets, I don't think _my wife_ would like that very much. She is your _sister_ , after all.” 

_Of all the people that Clarie could’ve fallen in love with…_

His little sister had fallen in love with his _orthopedist._

She sat down at the corner of his bed without hesitation and began to examine his infusion site, uncorking the set tube, and pressing a few buttons on his IV to make sure he was really done. Then she began to wrap up his fairly new PICC line with neon orange gauze, equipped with smiley faces of course. A nurse's job really, but _Billie was Billie._  

"Nah, Clare’d be willing to share." 

Billie clicked her tongue against the back of her front teeth as she instructed him to breathe in and out, her stethoscope resting on his scarred back, his soft face pressed into the crook of her neck. Cradled. Like a baby bird with a broken wing.

"Are you trying to steal me away, _Dowsy?"_ She laughed as she pulled away. 

"Only always." He quipped back easily.

She wasn't like the other specialists, she actually _listened_ to him. She wasn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty sometimes. She could stick and tape down an IV just as well or even better than any nurse, she could take temperatures and blood pressure and move like she commanded the very earth beneath her stilettos. 

"You should be out getting your own gal. Or wait, you'd prefer a harem, now wouldn't you?" 

He made a vomiting noise so realistic that he saw her hands instinctively twitch towards a nearby emesis basin. "I'm _poly_ , Bill. Not a creeper. Besides, I only like guys... _three_ of them in particular." A wistful sigh.

His surrogate best friend, his hospital mom, and his sister in both name and demeanor, made a screeching noise that sounded like a cat in heat and she grinned so widely with all her pretty white teeth, that he thought for a fleeting moment her cheeks were going to split. 

"Ooo! Tell me _everything!"_ She sounded like a teenager at a slumber party. 

He just shrugged, embarrassed. "Nothing to tell. They're my flatmates, my bandmates, I’ve known them for so many fucking years and I'm pretty sure they wouldn’t touch me like that with a ten-foot pole. Maybe _each other_ , but not _me_." Though even _that_ was a stretch. Roger bunched up the crunchy thin hospital sheets in his small hands.

Refusing to think about the way Freddie looked when he was sketching on the window-seat in the mornings before anyone else woke up.

The way Brian made sleepy grabby hands at whoever held coffee when he was first waking up after a studying binge. Usually Roger. The way that John would show them his newest inventions with such pride and happiness, or songs he’d cobbled together with the most thoughtful lyrics in the world. _(He wanted them so bad)._

"But isn't that a good thing? Just _join up._ " 

If there was one thing Roger knew about in his short life, it was _breaking_.

He'd been breaking for far longer than he could remember. Four breaks in the womb, two during delivery, six during resuscitation, three at the hands of less than careful nurses, one during a diaper change, three during teething, two while learning to crawl, eight while learning to walk, ten while learning to run, casual bumps and falls meant even more, sneezing too hard once broke a rib, swinging his arm once broke his scapula. But _joining?_

Roger Taylor didn't know how to mend anything, or how to join, all he knew how to do was _break._

"Join up? Are you crazy? We’re in a band together! We live together! It would just make things _weird_.”

If ever asked, he would never admit how sad he sounded about it.

"Well what do I know? I'm just over here with my boring-ass vanilla relationship." 

Billie moaned dramatically, her lab-coat fanning out behind her, and Roger laughed despite himself. She tended to do that to people. 

"Oh please! I doubt anything you and Clare do is _vanilla."_

"Well..." Billie winked suggestively and Roger was back to fake dry-heaving at her disgusting old crusty ass. 

"Anyways, you look like you're about good to go, Dowsy. Any last words before the Nightingales swoop you away in what... roughly _twenty years_ from now?" 

He winced and groaned comically, hands flying up to scrub at his greasy face, he certainly did not have the time to spend another eight or so hours waiting for discharge planning to actually do their jobs. "Bill, I have band practice in less than two hours. I can't miss this one... _please_." There was a serious vein in his voice, and Billie seemed to pick up on it with the way she nodded. 

"Right-o, I'll get you outta here. Just let me grab the sedan chair." 

He flushed so red, he was almost purple. "No thank you! I’d rather _die_ here. Give me liberty or give me death!”

Roger shot back cheekily, as always and she presented him with an incredulous look, rolling her eyes fondly. "Please tell me you haven't spent the last three days watching a nonstop _Liberty's Kids_ marathon on Youtube." 

"Guilty as charged. But come on ...I swear to God if I have to watch one more fucking episode of _Caillou_ , I am going to throw myself down a flight of stairs." 

He could hear her laughing all the way down the hall. 

Roger was diagnosed with _Osteogenesis Imperfecta_ , when he was still riding high in his mother's uterus. 

A typical twenty-week scan had shown the fact that he was positioned oddly.

Instead of being semi-curled up in the too small space, he looked like he was meditating, sitting like a little Buddha. His head was overly clear due to the unique porous nature of OI bones and both his femurs were broken. It was the first time abortion was suggested. But it wasn't the last. 

Typically only two of the ever-growing spectrum of OI types, presented in the womb.

Type II and Type III.

Type II babies weren't compatible with life, if they made it through to delivery, they didn't last very long after birth.

Type III babies were severely disabled, many didn't grow past three feet tall and were left confined to wheelchairs for the majority of their lives, they would have copious amounts of other health problems too. It would become never ending. Roger on the other hand, was born with neither. 

Type IV OI, his type, had a bit of a fickle nature. 

He had some characteristics of Type III OI, presenting with intrauterine fractures, Dentinogenesis Imperfecta _(brittle teeth, just as bad as it sounds, and as a dental student, he knew just how bad)_ , mild shortening and bowing of his long bones at birth, growth retardation _(he was a twenty-something guy and still stuck at five feet even)_ and scoliosis.

But with some characteristics of Type I mixed in as well, the mildest form of the condition, tinted sclera _(his were gray)_ , the psychological burden of looking fine on the outside and being pretty shitty on the inside, and ligament laxity.

Well. At least he wasn't _deaf. Yet._ Hearing loss tended to be a biggie for people with OI, but not for him thus far. So... _yay?_ He kind of wanted to hear, since music was his passion. _(He would have nightmares about waking up deaf, crying until he was blue in the face)._

In his lifetime he'd managed to accumulate _one hundred and ninety eight_ breaks and _eighty four_ surgeries. _(Long metal rodding in both his legs, fusing his spine, fixing bad fractures etc.)_ which was actually pretty good for someone on his end of the spectrum. 

He leaned back in his hospital bed, running his hands through his tight cornrows, courtesy of Billie, she knew how much he hated his frizzy blonde hair getting tangled in everything during his long hospital stays. So she always made time to come and braid it back for him.

Complete with pretty bobbles and beads, little suns and rainbows and butterflies. 

It was one of his favorite parts of the long stays. 

Although he did count his blessings, he wasn't a totally ungrateful little shit, like the fact that he could walk unaided _(about sixty-percent of the time)._ Sure it was more of a waddle, but he could do it.

The rest of the time he was on crutches because of one break, or confined to a wheelchair for another. 

But it was his life, he was _okay_ with it. He really couldn't imagine living life any other way. 

Roger scooted forwards on his ass to dig in his hospital go-bag at the foot of his bed. He'd brought an oversized hoodie _(Brian's)_ and some pretty constellation tights _(also Brian’s)_ to change into. They were both super soft; great things to wear when you haven't showered in three days and you feel like shit. 

Changing was an arduous process, but he managed to wiggle himself out of his Care Bears pediatric hospital gown and into the soft loungewear with minimal fanfare.

He was just re-snapping on his grey walking boot, when Billie reappeared, a wheelchair in hand and a smile on her purple-painted lips. "Your chariot awaits, my liege." 

She helped him soundlessly, with steadying hands as he clambered into the standard issue mobility device. He tried to ignore the wads of dried bubble gum that his fingers brushed against underneath the arm rests as he sat down.

Billie deposited his go-bag, his Disney Princess comforter and his laptop into his lap without so much as a second thought, as she wheeled him away. She didn't even laugh at the tan Ugg boot _(Freddie’s)_ that he was sporting on his uncasted foot. Which, for her, must've taken oodles of self control. 

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume you know your diagnosis and discharge instructions?"  

Uh... Yeah? He'd only been having pamidronate infusions for his entire life after all. 

"Pretty sure I've got it covered." 

"Sweet." 

When he was a baby, his mother had carried him around on a bed of foam. That lightweight foam pad had lined his crib, his car seat, and his crowning place in her arms. The first sensation he'd ever felt was the satin of that soft pad rubbing against his cheek.

Billie's voice reminded him of that. 

  
-X-

  
“Hey guys, I need to tell you something.”

Roger walked from his kit to sit on their coffee table. Freddie was flopped over on the couch, sketchpad in hand. Brian was on the carpet, typing away on his laptop, a bundle of notes spread out in a halo around him. John was trying to fix their microwave, and he looked grumpy as could be when Roger ushered him over. Forcing them all onto the couch so he could look at them in the face, when he told them.

“So, I’ve got this thing.”

“ _Herpes?”_

Roger’s head snapped up from where he’d been itching at his soft cast. “What? _No!”_

Freddie shrugged. “I was just covering my bases. No need to get all _touchy.”_

“Well, that’s not it! I’ve got this weird _bone disease,_ it’s why I’m always sporting one of these.” He itched at the cast again, rolling his eyes at Freddie’s antics. But the mood had instantly shifted. Suddenly all three sets of eyes focused their undivided attention on him.

“ _Weird bone disease?_ That’s awfully _descriptive_. Maybe try again, Rog?” John snark was out in all its glory to hide his true feelings. Like Roger didn’t know him by now.

“If I tell you, you’re going to freak out… So promise me that you won’t _Google it, okay?_ ” Looking at Brian in particular and he was mum until every single one of them nodded. Even if Bri did so loathly.

“Alright, I was born with it. It’s called _Osteogenesis Imperfecta_ , which basically means _imperfect bone formation._ They’re a touch weaker than normal people’s bones. So they tend to break a lot, especially when I do stupid shit. But it’s something I’ve had forever, and I’ve learned how to deal with it. And there are different types. So _don’t Google it._ ”

He stressed, the last thing he wanted was for one of them to get confronted with the most gruesome pictures of stillborn Type II babies. And Google always showed nothing but the worst and most horrific information on the subject.

But once he was asleep that night, three of the most important people in his life, crept back into the living room and did just that.

_“Do not be afraid to touch or hold an infant with osteogenesis imperfecta, but be careful. To lift an infant with osteogenesis imperfecta, spread your fingers apart and put one hand between the legs and under the buttocks, and place the other hand behind the shoulders, neck, and head.”_

_“They may have spinal deformities, respiratory complications, and brittle teeth.”_

“ _Bones may break even while the fetus is in the womb.”_

_“Medical bisphosphonates, given to the child either by mouth or intravenously, slow down bone resorption. In children with more severe osteogenesis imperfecta, bisphosphonate treatment often reduces the number of fractures and bone pain.”_

_“While there is no cure for osteogenesis imperfecta, there are ways to improve a child's quality of life.”_

_“Metal rods may be inserted in the long bones of the arms and legs to help reinforce the bone, and subsequently lessen the number of fractures.”_

“ _Although bracing is the usual treatment for scoliosis, it is not often effective in children with osteogenesis imperfecta because the ribs will become deformed from the brace, without preventing the scoliosis from worsening. Spinal fusion, a surgery in which the bones of the spine are realigned and fused together, may be recommended when the scoliosis becomes severe.”_

“Bloody fucking hell.” John’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates.

Freddie rushed over to vomit violently in the kitchen sink when Brian clicked on images. All the blood drained from his face, but he started taking notes. He was a scientist at heart and he would do his best to look after Roger. No matter what.

  
-X-

  
Mother hens, the lot of them.

Blatantly choosing to ignore the fact that he’d dealt with OI for most of his life. It was cute, he could deal. He did love them after all, with everything he had in him. But even this was too far.

He reached out to rub at the rubber pad on each corner of their coffee table. They had baby-proofed the flat. ( _Or Roger-proofed it, as Deaky called it). Oh you fools,_ he wanted to say. _Oh you poor sweet demented fools. My Mum fell into the same trap._

It didn’t matter how much baby-proofing you did or how hard you worked to make everything as safe as possible.

Roger would _still break._

  
-X-

  
Roger was eleven years old at his first OI Conference. 

Which also happened to fall on _Wishbone Day_ , the international awareness day for Osteogenesis Imperfecta. 

He had been in a wheelchair at the time, recovering from a nasty hip fracture that had required six different surgeries, three metal plates and a near impossible number of screws. 

But it was also one of the happiest days of his life. 

After spending his childhood as a curiosity, an oddity, _(most doctors had never even heard of OI, much less treated someone with it, so many of his impromptu doctors appointments turned into jam sessions of numerous medical professionals geeking out)_ , suddenly he was in a place where he was simply _ordinary_. It was the best feeling in the world. 

Look Roger wasn't stupid, he wanted to study biology for a reason. 

He had been able to pronounce the name of his condition and spell it forwards and backwards, since roughly the same time that other children were learning the alphabet. _Precocity_ was common in children with OI, and Roger was no different. He knew how idiotic it was to be embarrassed of something that you couldn’t change. But it didn't stop the feelings from coming of their own volition. And it certainly didn't stop his shitty decision-making skills. 

All he wanted to do was forget that little boy, sitting there and grinning in his wheelchair, Pokemon stickers peeling off the rims and clad in a bright yellow shirt to commemorate Wishbone Day. 

But how could he forget that little boy, when he saw him every time he looked in the goddamn fucking mirror?

The years had taken their toll of course, but he was still there all the same. Visible in the twitchy swing of Roger's half-flexed hips, the way the correct lighting could make his teeth look see-through, the dingy gray of his sclera, the numerous breaks. Yes, that kid was still very much inside of him. 

And no amount of wishing or pretending was ever going to make him fade away. 

  
-X-

  
But his crowning moment of fragility really came, when he snapped both his radius and ulna in two, with a particularly hard hit to his kit.

That sky-high falsetto that tore from his mouth was more like a muted scream, when he opened up to sing.

But he did it. He got through that whole gig with tears coursing down his cheeks and a second elbow where he could see the tented indentation of the break on the outside of his skin. He played on a broken arm with his sky-high pain tolerance and the adrenaline delirium fueling his every move.

When he finally staggered offstage, it was John Reid who caught him. Their brand new manager who took one look at Roger’s arm and was screaming at someone to call 999. Miami was shepherding the other boys over, the other boys who practically fell to bits when they saw the state of Roger’s arm.

“Oh God! It’s _broken!” No shit, Sherlock_.

“That snapping sound,” Freddie looked chalky white. “I thought it was one of your sticks breaking not… Why did you keep _playing_ , love?!” The poor man sounded bloody distraught and Roger just shrugged.

“Eh, I’ve had worse.”

 _“Worse?”_ John’s voice was hard. “This looks plenty bad to me, Rog. You should have _said something.”_

Roger rolled his eyes. “Yes, Deaky. _I suck, I’m awful._ Can you hand me the magazine behind you?” Someone had left a magazine sitting on one of the empty amp cases. John handed it over, obediently  _(wasn’t that a first)_. “Fred, love, I’ll need to borrow your scarf.” With that as well he used his good hand to wrap the magazine around his fucked up forearm and tied it securely with the scarf. An emergency splint. Wasn’t the first time he’d wrapped one up himself.

When EMS finally came around, Roger was both pissy and thoroughly over it.

“Yes, hello, I’ve broken my arm, splinted it and would like to go now please. Casualty is quite hectic this time of night and I would like to go home eventually. _Oh,_ and I have Brittle Bone Disease, here is the information card I keep in my wallet. These are my partners, they’ll be coming with me in the ambulance.”

If one could get frequent-flyer miles for being a patient Roger could’ve flown free to Cancun. _Twice._

John nodded, “What he said.”

The paramedics tried to fight him on it, at first. But it soon became abundantly clear that Roger knew all the tricks, including just how many people could really fit back there when there was no need for life saving measures. It was a _broken arm_. If a broken arm was going to kill him, he would’ve already died a dozen times over by then.

Of course that meant the boys were still there with him, sitting on a rumpled gurney in a less than quiet A&E as he waited for his fracture to be relocated. Gulping down that nitrous oxide to numb him because _wowza_ that reduction was going to hurt, at the same time he had crazy strong meds pumping through his PICC line.

His PICC line was a long thin tube sticking out of his arm, a bit like a permanent IV. A soft catheter that would carry blood to his heart. He needed it because after years of having liquid fire pumped into his veins, they were shot as fuck. If he needed blood to be drawn or anything else to happen, it would probably be cool to get it through that.

Pamidronate was a chemotherapy drug at heart. A poison. A drain cleaner. It also just happened to help his shitty bones get denser as well. 

Billie had raced down from the ortho floor to come harass him _(“God, do you ever go home?”)_ and it was her hands that wrapped securely around his fucked up arm, already starting to bruise and swell.

“Dowsy, take another puff, I’m about to start.” He did as he was told, but still couldn’t help the sharp cry as she brutally pulled his bones apart and shoved the pieces back together again. Tears fell down his ruddy cheeks and his hair dampened, sticking to his forehead with sickly sweat.

“All done.”

Roger let out a broken sobbed wheeze in response as she started plastering it up. He preferred waterproof fiberglass casting material, it was lighter and made showering a hell of a lot easier. It also came in tiger stripes. _(Sue him for wanting to break in style)._

“I don’t understand.” John whispered, sounding rough as could be. As if his bones had just been forced back together again and not Roger’s. “You drum _everyday._ You’ve played that solo bit a dozen times, you’ve never _broken_ doing that before, it doesn’t make any sense.” Roger simply rolled his eyes. Pressing a gold Sharpie marker into Deaky’s hand and gesturing down at his new dry cast.

“Look, my Mum used to carry me around on a foam pad as a baby. I still broke, _a lot_. Nothing _you_ do is going to prevent them, nothing _I_ can do is going to prevent them. I just have to be ready for when they happen.”

Roger really hoped that sketch John was working on didn’t turn out to be a dick.

 _“We_.” Brian chimed in, busy reading every hospital pamphlet he could get his hands on.

“Huh?”

“You said _‘I have to be ready.’_ The correct version is that _‘We have to be ready’._ Because we’re in this together now. For better or for worse.”

Freddie leaned up and captured Roger’s mouth in the sweetest kiss imaginable. More potent than any laughing gas or morphine at numbing his pain. Because _Oh God, holy shit._

“You’re _ours_ now, darling. And we aren’t letting go so easily.”

He remembered having a lime green splint packed onto his knee the night that Freddie had marched up to their van, the night they’d lost Tim and found their true voice. Freddie had drawn a little cat on the gross sweaty gauze.

Brian reached out and took his undamaged hand in his, pointedly pressing a kiss to the soft skin that hid there. A silent _I love you_ in a way that he knew Roger would understand.

Brian’s meeting had been a canary yellow cast on his wrist.

John finally pulled away to reveal something that should have been written with a knife into a tree, but worked just as well with a Sharpie on fiberglass. A heart with the initials: _RT+JD+FM+BM. Oh you sappy little romantic._ It was enough to have him blushing all the way up to his ears.

The day he’d met John, there had been a walking boot and hard purple cast on a different foot, he’d broken his ankle in four places. The doctors had to put a metal plate in it. Roger had wanted to get in contact with John again, they all had, after the audition, so the bassist had simply written his number on Roger’s cast due to the lack of scrap paper. _(They were college students, no one was ever prepared)_. The cast was convenient enough.

Roger learned the shitty way of the world when he was six years old. Tiny, in pain and laying in a hospital bed.

Roger learned just how amazing the world could be in his twenties. Tiny, in pain and laying in a hospital bed. Only this time, he had a cool cast, a Freddie, a Brian and a Deaky. And his life couldn’t have been better.

Even when Billie snapped a sly pic and sent it to Clare.

In his lifetime thus far he'd managed to accumulate two hundred breaks, eighty four surgeries, forty pairs of sunglasses, too many fucking shoes and three men to love.

Those were some pretty cool stats, if he did say so himself.

  
-X-

  
“ _Pain diminishes us, and it is so important to remember, in the midst of pain and everything that pain takes from you, that still ... you are enough. You are enough just as you are. You are worthy of love and kindness. You are enough. And you have enough.”_

― Steve Leder

  
No one is too broken to be loved.

 


End file.
